SCAMLAND where you get PIG-BUTCHERED

Pig-butcher by Dall-E

You’re on 'linked in'. You hook up with Anna, who lives in Singapore.  After about six month chatting online, she tells you how she got into crypto and doubled her investment.  She  can clue you in.  You take the bait. After you double your money, you decide to cash in. Poof, it’s gone. So is Anna. You’ve been pig-butchered.

Anna is a captive living in camp-town in Myanmar. If she doesn’t keep up the scams, she's punished.  Her minders don’t fool around. Torture is common. 

Scamming is a 500bn dollar business -  on par  with the illegal drug business without the product. Social media was made for scamming. A perfect site to nurture a pig, butcher him. when the scan pays off.  AI has escalated the danger.  If you get butchered, tell your friends. You might save potential pigs from getting the axe.  

Source: Economist

Next week:  BAD-ASS-BROS:  Tump. Vance. Musk 

Note: Okay, be careful out there. The best course of action in most cases is simply to ignore the threats. Do nothing. Do not reply to people you do not know in real life. If you get a message claiming you have been hacked, the hack likely is a psychological one: they try to make you panic and react, then get you the hook when trying to "fix" the non-existing hack. As said, ignore, do nothing. Be zen.

CU

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Eki

DEEPSEEK: new hot-shot on the block

A storm in a teapot by Flux1 dev AI

DeepSeek rocked Silicon Valley. Sent tech titans into a tizzy. Sam Altman, OpenAI boss is dead sure DeepSeek used OPEAI data. Nvidia, chip-maker , darling of investors, lost 500 bn.  The brouhaha ain’t over yet.

DeepSeek, a small hedge fund, used cheaper chips and less machinery to come  up with a super AI app. 

It cost approx. 6 m. Just after OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle had signed a 500 bn contract with Trump’s blessing. Oy very, have they got a headache.

Governments worry that the DeepSeek is tapping data - Tik Tok* was blocked by the US Supreme Court for that reason.  Researchers claim DeepSeek is peppered with propaganda. The Chinese Top Dogs worry DeepSeek’s  bite is bigger than theirs. Users don’t seem to give a rat’s ass. What comes next?  EKI! 

*Trump gave Tik Tok  a 75 day reprieve

Source:s: Economist, New York Times, Washington Post

Next week: SCAMLAND where you get PIG-BUTCHERED

Note: The DeepSeek storm in a teapot lasted a few days. It turns out, it's a pretty decent model, somewhat censored - but so are the US models, just on different topics. DeepSeek does not want to talk about Tianamen square, ChatGPT does not want to talk about sex. Both reflect the norms of the originating society.

The alleged low training cost of DeepSeek came with an asterisk. Yes, the final training run was cheap. No, that is not the cost of the development of the model, but rather just a small fraction of it. Anyway, the AI community has moved on, the brouhaha is pretty much history.

Today (18. of February - it is necessary to give exact date, not just a vague description like mid-feb, as the progress is so fast) X-Ai released Grok 3, the king of the hill for as-of-now. Last week it was Google's Gemini 2.0. That is unless you consider the reasoning models, where OpenAI:s o3-mini(high) was on top. DeepSeek belongs in the bubbling under category, together with another Chinese LLM, Qwen.

It looks like we're still at an exponential curve of progress. No-one knows how long that will last. Interesting times.

PS: I would not be surprised, if stiffling competition rather than real security concerns were behind the TikTok ban. Oh, and Trump had pretty much nothing at all to do with that 500 bn investment. The way i see it, this was a cheap way to buy influence into Trump administration for the companies involved - they did not really need to do anything more than tolerate being in the same room with Trump for a few minutes, while he took the credit for the investment that would have happened with or without him.

CU

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Eki

ELISA OY & INTRUM sue LITTLE MARGIE

Phoney gangster by Flux AI

It was Monday. I called Eki. He said, ‘you’ve been sued for 2euros, 40 cents.’  I called Intrum Justitia, the debt collector, it was 10 euros, 4 cents. And 308 euros 80 cents at the District Court. Elisa Corporate Service, host for Littlemargieproductions’ website, was the plaintiff.

The LMMP site was paid by direct debit. My bank stopped payments because Elisa’s bills weren’t the correct format. LMP was no longer a company.  I told Elisa to send the new E-bills to my personal acct. Or take down the site. When the site was till up, I assumed the bills were paid.  Big mistake.

My bank contact paid  the bills LMP’s former accountant received from Intrum collection agency*.  I called Elisa to verify. An agent told me the December bill was still due. I gave her a short version of  Elisa V LMP. She cancelled the December bill. Sent a verification and wished me a HAPPY NEW YEAR.

*I have an Elisa email but was never notified

**Because of macular degeneration I can’t use online banking  

sources; Elisa, Intrum, personal experience

Next week: Social media INFLUENCERS: world MARKETEEERS


Note: 

In my honest opinion, Elisa sucks as a company. It used to be a landline share co-operation (HPY) that worked to benefit all users, but has changed into a company that just maximizes profits for the stock market, charging more and more for their enshittifying services. Users be damned.

If I did not have a retro-grade e-mail address from the olden days I want to keep (kolumbus.fi), i would probably have already severed my ties with Elisa completely. I have changed to another ISP / phone company though.

For me, the camel's back was broken by them selling me 5G connection (to replace copper), that would be "twice as fast" as the landline version. In reality, i got 5 mbit/s from the promised 500 mbit/s. After way too much digging around and consulting the (paid) support line, i got a hold to a person that actually knew what was the issue. There simply are no 5G antennas near enough to my address yet - that did not stop them from selling and billing for it though. No refund offer, and they refused to change it back to landline. Competing service (DNA) got me that 500 mbit/s over cable, cheaper. And it actually works as advertised.

Now, let's not even get into that loan shark "service", Intrum Justitia. I think escalating that 2,40€ missing interest payment all the way to a court without properly contacting littlemargieproductions is not an outlier. I think it is a business model.

Despicable businesses, both of them.

CU

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Eki